"
"Oh, Mrs. Wilson! Oh, you kind, noble-hearted creature, surely Heaven
will reward you."
"That is past praying for, my dear. Heaven wasn't going to be long in
debt to a farmer's wife, you may be sure; not a day, not an hour. I
had hardly laid you to my breast when you seemed to grow to my heart.
My milk had been tormenting me for one thing. My good mother had
thought of that, I'll go bail; and of course you relieved me. But,
above all, you numbed the wound in my heart, and healed it by degrees:
a part of my love that lay in the churchyard seemed to come back like,
and settle on the little helpless darling that milked me. At whiles I
forgot you were not my own; and even when I remembered it, it was--I
don't know--somehow--as if it wasn't so. I knew in my head you were
none of mine, but what of that? I didn't feel it here. Well, miss, I
nursed you a year and two months, and a finer little girl never was
seen, and such a weight! And, of course, I was proud of you; and often
your dear mother tried to persuade me to take a twenty-pound note, or
ten; but I never would. I could not sell my milk to a queen. I'd
refuse it, or I'd make a gift of it, and the love that goes with it,
which is beyond price. I didn't say so to her in so many words, but I
did use to tell her 'I was as much in her little girl's debt as she
was in mine,' and so I was. But as for a silk gown, and a shawl, and
the like, I didn't say 'No' to them; who ever does?"
"Nurse!"
"My lamb!"
"Can you ever forgive me for confounding you with a servant? I am so
inexperienced.
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